Don't mess with the Big Dog
The Sunday before last, Bill Clinton appeared on Fox News for an interview with Chris Wallace, and Wallace was doing the "Clinton didn't do anything to stop 9/11" narrative. Clinton smacked him down. Video can be seen at Crooks and Liars.
Conservative commentators were screeching that Clinton "lost it." But as for the substance of what Clinton was saying... He's right. When Clinton was in office, everything he did to combat al Qaeda was criticized by the Republican Congress as "wagging the dog" to distract people from his marital infidelity problem. Just weeks before the end of Clinton's term, his terrorism czar, Richard Clarke, drafted recommendations for how to respond to the U.S.S. Cole attack, which were completed within two months of the attack. The recommendations, which included providing military support to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, were passed on to Bush's transition team, but the new Bush administration did not act on them.
posted by Mark M @ 10/03/2006 10:07:00 PM
3 Comments:
Love the link!!! Thanks Mark
Antonio... All my research on your claim about Tony Lake goes back to one source: a book by Richard Miniter. Just one source. And who is Richard Miniter? Well, for one, he was once a policy analyst for the right-wing think tank CEI. You know, the guys who came up with this little slogan: "They call it pollution. We call it life." Pollution is good for you. I'll believe Mr. Miniter when I see his source.
You say there were al-Qaeda attacks every year of Clinton's presidency. The first probable al-Qaeda attack was in Yemen in 1992 during the administration of Bush 41. Clinton was president in 1993 and 1994, but you don't say anything about attacks that occurred those years -- there were none.
As for the 1995 and 1996 bombings you cite -- sorry, that was Hezbollah, not al-Qaeda.
You failed to give an example of an actual attack in 1997. There was no attack that year.
Finally, in 1998, we have a legitimate attack carried out by al-Qaeda -- and hey! -- Clinton responded to it.
As for the USS Cole bombing, there was a reason the Clinton administration opted not to initiate a military offensive. For one, Clarke presented his plan the last week in December, with less than a month left in Clinton's term. Also, even though al-Qaeda was suspected in the Cole attack, the CIA didn't confirm the link until the week of January 27, 2001, a full week into Bush's first term. So it was really Bush's responsibility to carry out Clarke's plans. Instead, Bush ignored Clarke and demoted him.
You wrote: "To say that they did not become an issue until Bush took office is an obvious lie." Well, yes, it would be an obvious lie if anyone were actually saying that. But no. The issue is that Clinton saw al-Qaeda as a serious threat and took action, even if the action was insufficient. Then Bush took office and ignored the problem for eight months. Which is worse?
that was a great clip!
I'm no great fan of Bubba, but he did an admirable job of walking into the lions den, and coming out on top.
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